Perceptions of performance feedback for an Incredible Years trained teacher : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Educational Psychology at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand

Material from Appendix A redacted due to copyright restrictions. Adapted from: Webster-Stratton, C. (2012). Incredible Years Teacher Classroom Management pyramid framework. Retrieved from http://www.incredibleyears.com/wp-content/uploads/800pxteaching-pyramid-good071213.jpgThe Incredible Years Teacher Classroom Management (IYTCM) programme, developed by Webster-Stratton, is delivered to New Zealand teachers as part of an initiative promoting positive behaviour in the education sector. The IYTCM incorporates evidence-based practices that have demonstrated effective and favourable outcomes for students and teachers. Teachers are able to create positive and nurturing learning environments through regular and accurate use of pro-active strategies and appropriate behaviour management practices. In turn, these environments can prevent and/or reduce adverse life outcomes for students. Performance feedback (PFB) was assessed as a support mechanism to enhance implementation of IYTCM command strategies. The use of a mixed methods design with an intervention trial, contributed to the exploration and establishment of value-oriented findings. By integrating methods, data and, analysis of qualitative and quantitative approaches, this research, (a) facilitated awareness for the teacher on their classroom management practices, (b) identified contextual factors that resulted in confounding effects on implementation; (c) underscored the teacher’s perceptions of credibility in relation to PFB consultants; and (d) considered the effects of the teacher’s perceived efficacy in classroom management. A concurrent examination of the findings produced insights into factors that may facilitate and/or hinder PFB, such as, attitudes toward practices, and degree of behavioural control. It was concluded that the combination of (i) teacher’s perceived efficacy; (ii) incongruence of IYTCM strategies with current practices; and (iii) poor knowledge to facilitate attitudinal change, may have impeded the teacher’s intentions to use IYTCM practices. The teacher’s perceptions and experiences present in this research have implications for the delivery and sustainability of classroom management practices, as well as efforts to ensure favourable outcomes for students

Association between childhood adversities and long-term suicidality among South Africans from the results of the South African Stress and Health study: a cross-sectional study

Objective: Suicide and suicidal behaviours are significant public health problems and a leading cause of death worldwide and in South Africa. We examined the association between childhood adversities and suicidal behaviour over the life course. Methods: A national probability sample of 4351 South African adult participants (aged 18 years and older) in the South African Stress and Health (SASH) study was interviewed as part of the World Mental Health Surveys initiative. Respondents provided sociodemographic and diagnostic information, as well as an account of suicide-related thoughts and behaviours. Suicidality or suicidal behaviour were defined as were defined as suicide attempts and suicidal ideation in the total sample, and suicide plans and attempts among ideators. Childhood adversities included physical abuse, sexual abuse, parental death, parental divorce, other parental loss, family violence, physical illness and financial adversity. The association between suicidality and childhood adversities was examined using discrete-time survival models. Results: More than a third of the respondents with suicidal behaviour experienced at least one childhood adversity, with physical abuse, parental death and parental divorce being the most prevalent adversities. Physical abuse, sexual abuse and parental divorce were identified as significant risk markers for lifetime suicide attempts, while physical abuse and parental divorce were significantly correlated with suicidal ideation. Two or more childhood adversities were associated with a twofold higher risk of lifetime suicide attempts. Sexual abuse (OR 9.3), parental divorce (OR 3.1) and childhood physical abuse (OR 2.2) had the strongest associations with lifetime suicide attempts. The effect of childhood adversities on suicidal tendencies varied over the life course. For example, sexual abuse was significantly associated with suicide attempts during childhood and teen years, but not during young and later adulthood. Conclusions: Childhood adversities, especially sexual abuse, physical abuse and parental divorce, are important risk factors for the onset and persistence of suicidal behaviour, with this risk being greatest in childhood and adolescence

The podocin V260E mutation predicts steroid resistant nephrotic syndrome in black South African children with focal segmental glomerulosclerosis

In black African children with focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS) there are high rates of steroid resistance. The aim was to determine genetic associations with apolipoprotein L1 (APOL1) renal risk variants and podocin (NPHS2) variants in 30 unrelated black South African children with FSGS. Three APOL1 variants were genotyped and the exons of the NPHS2 gene sequenced in the cases and controls. APOL1 risk alleles show a modest association with steroid sensitive nephrotic syndrome (SSNS) and steroid resistant nephrotic syndrome (SRNS). The NPHS2 V260E variant was present in SRNS cases (V/V = 5; V/E = 4; E/E = 11), and was absent in SSNS cases. Haplotype analysis suggests a single mutation origin for V260E and it was associated with a decline in kidney function over a 60-month period (p = 0.026). The V260E variant is a good predictor of autosomal recessive SRNS in black South African children and could provide useful information in a clinical setting.The Department of Science and Technologyhttps://www.nature.com/commsbioam2020Paediatrics and Child Healt

The Linkage Outcomes of a Large-scale, Rapid Transfer of HIV-infected Patients From Hospital-based to Community-based Clinics in South Africa

Background: President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) funding changes have resulted in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) clinic closures. We evaluated linkage to care following a large-scale patient transfer from a PEPFAR-funded, hospital-based HIV clinic to government-funded, community-based clinics in Durban. Methods: All adults were transferred between March and June 2012. Subjects were surveyed 5–10 months post-transfer to assess self-reported linkage to the target clinic. We validated self-reports by auditing records at 8 clinics. Overall success of transfer was estimated using linkage to care data for both reached and unreached subjects, adjusted for validation results. Results: Of the 3913 transferred patients, 756 (19%) were assigned to validation clinics; 659 (87%) of those patients were reached. Among those reached, 468 (71%) had a validated clinic record visit. Of the 46 who self-reported attending a different validation clinic than originally assigned, 39 (85%) had a validated visit. Of the 97 patients not reached, 59 (61%) had a validated visit at their assigned clinic. Based on the validation rates for reached and unreached patients, the estimated success of transfer for the cohort overall was 82%. Conclusions: Most patients reported successful transfer to a community-based clinic, though a quarter attended a different clinic than assigned. Validation of attendance highlights that nearly 20% of patients may not have linked to care and may have experienced a treatment interruption. Optimizing transfers of HIV care to community sites requires collaboration with receiving clinics to ensure successful linkage to care

AIDS-related mycoses: the way forward.

The contribution of fungal infections to the morbidity and mortality of HIV-infected individuals is largely unrecognized. A recent meeting highlighted several priorities that need to be urgently addressed, including improved epidemiological surveillance, increased availability of existing diagnostics and drugs, more training in the field of medical mycology, and better funding for research and provision of treatment, particularly in developing countries

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Risk factors for Coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) death in a population cohort study from the Western Cape province, South Africa

Risk factors for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) death in sub-Saharan Africa and the effects of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and tuberculosis on COVID-19 outcomes are unknown. We conducted a population cohort study using linked data from adults attending public-sector health facilities in the Western Cape, South Africa. We used Cox proportional hazards models, adjusted for age, sex, location, and comorbidities, to examine the associations between HIV, tuberculosis, and COVID-19 death from 1 March to 9 June 2020 among (1) public-sector “active patients” (≥1 visit in the 3 years before March 2020); (2) laboratory-diagnosed COVID-19 cases; and (3) hospitalized COVID-19 cases. We calculated the standardized mortality ratio (SMR) for COVID-19, comparing adults living with and without HIV using modeled population estimates.Among 3 460 932 patients (16% living with HIV), 22 308 were diagnosed with COVID-19, of whom 625 died. COVID19 death was associated with male sex, increasing age, diabetes, hypertension, and chronic kidney disease. HIV was associated with COVID-19 mortality (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR], 2.14; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.70–2.70), with similar risks across strata of viral loads and immunosuppression. Current and previous diagnoses of tuberculosis were associated with COVID-19 death (aHR, 2.70 [95% CI, 1.81–4.04] and 1.51 [95% CI, 1.18–1.93], respectively). The SMR for COVID-19 death associated with HIV was 2.39 (95% CI, 1.96–2.86); population attributable fraction 8.5% (95% CI, 6.1–11.1)

Synthesis, X-ray crystal structure and cytotoxicity of a new tetranuclear ruthenium arene complex

The tetranuclear ruthenium arene compound [(cym)4Ru4(2)Cl6]Cl2 (3) (cym = η6-p-cymene, 2 = 1,2-bis(di-N-methylimidazol-2-ylphosphino)ethane) was prepared and characterised by one- and two-dimensional NMR techniques. Its cytotoxicity against four different cell lines was determined and, with an approximate IC50 of >100 μM 3 can be regarded as non-toxic. Its partition coefficient in n-octanol/water (log D7.4) was also determined. The structures of complex 3 as well as of the related compound [(cym)2Ru2(4)Cl2]Cl2 (5) (4 = 1,2-bis(di-N-methylimidazol-2-ylphosphino)ethane dioxide) were determined by single crystal structure analysis. Upon oxidation in protic solvents, ligand 2 shows P–C bond cleavage reactions to yield P,P′-bis(N-methylimidazol-2-yl)ethylene diphosphinic acid (6)

Multiple‐victim

Previous studies of homicides in South Africa have examined serial murders and mass killings. While some scholars have examined parricides in African countries such as Ghana and Zimbabwe, few have examined the intersection of parricide and multiple victim homicides in the context of South Africa. This paper examines multiple victim parricides in a South African context using newspapers and court records as data. Eighteen cases of multiple‐victim parricides were identified and analysed. Our findings indicate that multiple victim parricides in South Africa are shaped by residential patterns as well as social and cultural factors that are unique to South Africa that are embodied in the offence characteristics. The implications on the findings are discussed.University of Pretoria's Visiting Scholarhttp://wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jip2021-08-03hj2020Early Childhood Educatio